Police ignoring pavement cycling

notsoblue

Headhuunter wrote:

jds_1981 wrote:

Zebra crossings - annoys me when pedestrians idle around at the side.
In this situation I'm generally nicer than drivers at stopping and beckoning them to cross. (lots of crossings on my way in to compare.) Would be nice if they were better at signaling intent to cross.

Yeah I hate that.... Just cross, don't just stand there staring at me! If you cross I can continue on behind you, it's not necessary for me as a cyclist to come to a complete and utter halt for you to cross the road....

Yep annoying. I usually give them the nod to cross to clear up any ambiguity.

rml380z

Headhuunter wrote:

jds_1981 wrote:

Zebra crossings - annoys me when pedestrians idle around at the side.
In this situation I'm generally nicer than drivers at stopping and beckoning them to cross. (lots of crossings on my way in to compare.) Would be nice if they were better at signaling intent to cross.

Yeah I hate that.... Just cross, don't just stand there staring at me! If you cross I can continue on behind you, it's not necessary for me as a cyclist to come to a complete and utter halt for you to cross the road....

I find the Highway Code pretty stupid on this; http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070108 (rule 19).

So, give vehicles plenty of time to stop before crossing, but they don't have to stop until you've started crossing. Hmm.

Teddy Westside

rml380z wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

jds_1981 wrote:

Zebra crossings - annoys me when pedestrians idle around at the side. ...

Yeah I hate that.... .

I find the Highway Code pretty stupid on this; http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070108 (rule 19).

So, give vehicles plenty of time to stop before crossing, but they don't have to stop until you've started crossing. Hmm.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's one of the worst-implemented rules I've seen and actually contradictory - a pedestrian mustn't cross until the traffic has stopped but the traffic needn't stop till the pedestrian sets foot on the crossing! :roll: It's a recipe for disaster and I've had far too many close calls (as a pedestrian) due to this poorly-written rule.

The rule should simply be that traffic must stop (when safe to do so, just as at traffic lights) when a pedestrian approaches the crossing (i.e. the edge of the pavement within the boundaries of the crossing). No grey area, no confusion.

Anonymous

Teddy Westside wrote:

rml380z wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

jds_1981 wrote:

Zebra crossings - annoys me when pedestrians idle around at the side. ...

Yeah I hate that.... .

I find the Highway Code pretty stupid on this; http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070108 (rule 19).

So, give vehicles plenty of time to stop before crossing, but they don't have to stop until you've started crossing. Hmm.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's one of the worst-implemented rules I've seen and actually contradictory - a pedestrian mustn't cross until the traffic has stopped but the traffic needn't stop till the pedestrian sets foot on the crossing! :roll: It's a recipe for disaster and I've had far too many close calls (as a pedestrian) due to this poorly-written rule.

The rule should simply be that traffic must stop (when safe to do so, just as at traffic lights) when a pedestrian approaches the crossing (i.e. the edge of the pavement within the boundaries of the crossing). No grey area, no confusion.

I agree, but I think it's also true that if a car driver hits a pedestrian on a zebra crossing it's his fault, unless it can be proved the pedestrian stepped out with the intention of getting hit.

Sounds odd, but my dad tells me there once was a case where the driver proved the pedestrian aimed to get hit, and got off the charge,

BG2000

I think the London Police force must have been reading this thread :

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/p ... down-27937

Haa haa to anyone who got caught - good on the Police for doing something about the idiots who give proper cyclists a bad name...

cee

BG2000 wrote:

I think the London Police force must have been reading this thread :

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/p ... down-27937

Haa haa to anyone who got caught - good on the Police for doing something about the idiots who give proper cyclists a bad name...

And motorists apparently...

Interesting to note that they handed out more than double the number of tickets to motorists.....

400 to cyclists...
900 to motorists...

I read posts on other threads about motorists behaviour being ignored, to concentrate on cyclists, however the bare numbers seem to indicate otherwise.

jds_1981

Weren't they supposed to be doing things like focusing on bike theft? the 30 -> 40 officers only managed to arrest 20 people regarding this. That sounds like a major fail to me (unless there is a huge amount of theft attributable to those up to twenty people.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/g ... ime-london

Seems like they're migrating away from the useful stuff because it is hard and moving on to low hanging fruit which generally harms no-one.

UpTheWall

cee wrote:

BG2000 wrote:

I think the London Police force must have been reading this thread :

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/p ... down-27937

Haa haa to anyone who got caught - good on the Police for doing something about the idiots who give proper cyclists a bad name...

And motorists apparently...

Interesting to note that they handed out more than double the number of tickets to motorists.....

400 to cyclists...
900 to motorists...

I read posts on other threads about motorists behaviour being ignored, to concentrate on cyclists, however the bare numbers seem to indicate otherwise.

Hmm, how many cycle journeys vs car journeys are there in london? Once we have that context then the above stats will be more comparable.

ooermissus

jds_1981 wrote:

Weren't they supposed to be doing things like focusing on bike theft? Seems like they're migrating away from the useful stuff because it is hard and moving on to low hanging fruit which generally harms no-one.

+1

They were supposed to be 'disrupting' trade in stolen bikes. Head to Gumtree to see how well that's working out.

cee

UpTheWall wrote:

cee wrote:

BG2000 wrote:

I think the London Police force must have been reading this thread :

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/p ... down-27937

Haa haa to anyone who got caught - good on the Police for doing something about the idiots who give proper cyclists a bad name...

And motorists apparently...

Interesting to note that they handed out more than double the number of tickets to motorists.....

400 to cyclists...
900 to motorists...

I read posts on other threads about motorists behaviour being ignored, to concentrate on cyclists, however the bare numbers seem to indicate otherwise.

Hmm, how many cycle journeys vs car journeys are there in london? Once we have that context then the above stats will be more comparable.

point being...they cant have been ignored.....tickets still got handed out.

theres a few other numbers that would be interesting....like...how many tickets were handed out when they were not running the campaign........

My suspicion is that outwith the campaign, the motorists tickets numbers probably don't change all that much.....but the cyclists ticket numbers drop significantly....

a guess of course........

electric_blue

notsoblue wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

jds_1981 wrote:

Zebra crossings - annoys me when pedestrians idle around at the side.
In this situation I'm generally nicer than drivers at stopping and beckoning them to cross. (lots of crossings on my way in to compare.) Would be nice if they were better at signaling intent to cross.

Yeah I hate that.... Just cross, don't just stand there staring at me! If you cross I can continue on behind you, it's not necessary for me as a cyclist to come to a complete and utter halt for you to cross the road....

Yep annoying. I usually give them the nod to cross to clear up any ambiguity.

I usually slow up and try to give them every opportunity to cross before I get there. But occasionally you get someone who insists on waiting till you reach the crossing then expect you to stop. So in that situation - if they haven;t started crossing by the time I reach the stop line, I keep going. F--- them, they're obviously not in a hurry. and this happens when I'm the only vehicle on the road!

EC2boy

Hi Headhunter

I'm the main author of the blog you've linked to about City Police and RLJing etc.

http://cyclelondoncity.blogspot.com/201 ... -what.html

I've been to a couple of these meetings because I used to live in the Barbican. I now go to the one near to where I work at Blackfriars.

The problem with the meetings is that it is exactly the mad ranty people who take the time out their diaries to do something as, well, nerdy, as going to these police meetings. So, what you get is a dozen or so usually older people and one or two sane voices. And the anti brigade always always wins because of the numbers.

That's the problem with these meetings.

If people want to sway the local policing priorities then the only way to do this is to change the vote in these meetings. And it's really difficult to get cycling friendly people to pitch up. If we don't pitch up at these meetings, we're going to lose out to the anticycling brigade every time.

In the case of the City, this is where you can find out the meeting dates. The Barbican meeting was on Monday and I wasn't able to attend that one unfortunately but it's the Barbican one in particular that causes the most anti-cycling rants (and they really are illogical rants for the most part). As soon as one person rants, it's really easy for everyone in the room to nod and agree that RLJers are evil devils and that's it, the priority gets set. Get a few people saying they find dangerous HGVs more of a threat and you swing the vote.

I've listed the next meetings here

http://cyclelondoncity.blogspot.com/201 ... tings.html

http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/CityP ... /index.htm